Monday, October 06, 2014

JOBS - The 'Living Wage' Fight in U.S. Cities

"New York City, LA among cities moving to raise minimum wage" PBS NewsHour 10/5/2014

Excerpt

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Some of America’s biggest and most expensive cities are acting on their own to increase the minimum wage.  For some insight yesterday I spoke to Matt Flegenheimer, a reporter with the New York Times.

New York did something recently, so did L.A., what did they do?

MATT FLEGENHEIMER, New York Times:  So, in New York at least on Tuesday, Mayor DeBlasio signed an executive order essentially expanding a law that was passed in 2012 – over the objections of Mayor Bloomberg – which stipulated that on city subsidized projects, workers were entitled to a what’s called a ‘living wage’.

At this point it would be $13.13 as the minimum.  Sort of a wide expansion compared to what we saw a couple of years ago.

Any tenants or subtenants on projects that receive city subsidies now are entitled to that wage, it is about 18,000 workers by the administration’s estimate.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  OK and this is if it goes through and makes it through city council, right?

MATT FLEGENHEIMER:  No, this is an executive order, which is sort of a sticking point.  Some of the council members have kind of chafed at being bypassed in this case.  They probably would have supported it.  It has been a very sort of compliant council here in New York.  But the mayor did this on his own.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  And Eric Garcetti in Los Angeles trying a little something different.

MATT FLEGENHEIMER:  A little bit different.  So, there are a couple of things going on there.  The sort of broader minimum wage package he is pushing for I believe $13.25 and then for hotel workers – in a lot of cases – they have gone for sort of an expansive move through the council as well, which has been faced with some opposition obviously from some of the business groups who have said that this could cost jobs in the long run potentially if workers don’t want to, rather, if employers don’t want to pay these wages to workers, they’ll take their jobs elsewhere, so there’s been a bit of a debate there over that.

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